Republic of Ireland Team 2023/24 [old thread]

Echo and the Sonnymen 🤣

Your obsessed with Hughton - a poor mans big Sam

Ah yes the tactical geniuses that are McGrath and Dunne. Both excellent players and servants but thats where it stops. Neither have any involvement in the game post their playing careers.

As for some of the other nonsense that you're copy and pasting in every post, well it's just that, nonsense. 'Serbia should have scored 3 or 4', but they didn't because we defended manfully and our keeper did very well, they are just facts.

You claim Azerbaijan 'had many chances' yesterday. They had one, maybe two, decent long range efforts which Bazunu saved well. Outside of that, nothing. We had more shots overall and more three more shots on target. Again, these are just facts.

You don't like Kenny, you don't have to, we can all see that. But you can't discredit him when we lose and also when we win. He's bringing through new talent where he can. As you well know and are obviously ignoring we do not have bundles of quality players available to pick from. It's a work in progress and most reasonable people are able to see and respect that.

Please don't copy and paste another of your posts as a reply.

Regarding Toshack and what he did at Wales, I think people are ascribing skill to what in reality was luck. A few games of international football didn't make these players. It was their own individual ability combined with high-level club form. Having the likes of Bale, Ramsey, Ledley, Allen, etc. all come through at the same time was just one of those random freak occurrences than you get in international football. It's why Belgium are punching above their weight and ranked number 1 in the world, whereas the likes of Germany are in a relative slump and ranked 14.

To suggest that Kenny can "do a Toshack" is pretty disingenuous and sets him up for failure if you ask me. The 800lb gorilla in the room is that this still remains a very mediocre panel of players that we have available. I see the latest puff piece from balls.ie is describing Obgene as becoming a "key" player for us. I would love to be proven wrong, but history suggests that 24 year old League 1 players who aren't showing much at that level don't typically become key players for their country.

The cart cannot come before the horse. Unfortunately, even in the time of Kenny's reign, we've seen the level at which our players operate dip. Many of the older players have ended up dropping a division, but so few of the younger ones have been able to make a step up to compensate. People are deluding themselves if they think Kenny can have any impact on the standard of the players available.

There seems to be a overwhelming consensus here that we've turned a corner, and that we are a much improved side from the same team that started out under Kenny 17 games ago. Although there have been some improvements, I think overall the performance last night was poor and that we still haven't grasped the basics.

Azerbaijan had 64% possession last night. I thought one of the main points of Kenny's philosophy was to stop this from happening, especially against inferior oppositions. Instead we gifted them so much time on the ball and rarely put them under pressure. They had time to push forward, pick out a pass, and unforgivably - time to shoot. Lessons weren't learned from the first time we played them when they scored with a peach of a goal from long range.

Azerbaijan made over 200 additional passes than we did with a higher completion rate. Again, weren't these type of statistics meant to change with the appointment of Kenny? On occasion last night we had the ball in the final third only to slowly pass it backwards into the center and then onto Bazunu who punted it long. It's certainly not as frequent as to how often it happened under O'Neill or McCarthy but it's still happening.

Squad selection remains an issue. Before the game Horgan and McClean's inclusion was a baffling one. Although I thought McClean did OK, Horgan again looked out of his depth and was rightfully substituted when he was. Hendrick again flatters to deceive with the question of what he offers this team still an unanswered one. I would like to think that had Knight been fit he would have started ahead of Hendrick, but who knows.

The result was pleasing last night. But massive amounts of work still need to be done, most of which should have been done by now. I'm delighted Kenny got his first competitive win but the jury is still out big time.

Agree with this. I feel like the shackles were taken off the players yesterday. Instead of trying to keep the ball at all costs, they were encouraged to take more risks and be more adventurous. The number of passes and completion rate naturally fell and we did give the ball away cheaply at times, but we did also create a hat-full of high quality chances. What was also refreshing was the number and variety of opportunities that we created from open play, we got chances from balls being played wide, long, through the middle, Azerbaijan couldn't live with our unpredictability when going forward. The fact that we didn't even get our first corner until the 80 something minute meant we didn't need to rely on an Egan or Duffy header as we often did in the past.

It will be interesting to see how Kenny approaches the Qatar game, personally I am hoping for more of the same. Let's try to be an unpredictable team that doesn't fall into a style box. For a team with a mediocre panel of players, it's our best chance of success.

I really hope he treats the Qatar game like a friendly and tries out different tactics and players.

Too many Irish managers throwing out the A team to keep the stats up over the years.

Win lose or draw I really don't think a friendly against Qatar is worth the eventual hyperbole were are gonna get after the game

You reverse that possession and passes stats but the game finishes a draw and you'd have pages and pages of Kenny out. Yeah we went more direct tonight but we played to the conditions to avoid an Azeri high press on a **** pitch. Had we tried playing out from the back and coughed up a goal from a mistake because of the pitch we'd have pages of moaning.

Yeah the possession stat could have been a bit better but we ended up with Ogbene as our main hold up player in the second half and Hendrick was Hendrick. Idah was poor last night and gave away easy possession when we needed him to hold it up for us, and Hendrick was too slow in midfield. If we're to make 3-4-2-1 work then we need a hold up player that's playing regularly and more than just Josh Cullen for that midfield two position.

We created god knows how many chances last night and should have been 5-0 in the end. Our first time scoring three goals in a competitive game in exactly four years to the day and our first time in six years years winning a competitive game by three goals or more.

I'm expecting we'll line up in the same formation on Tuesday and if so we really need to see someone other than Idah as that link up player. Whether it's Parrott or Will Keane if he also wants his link up player to be someone that can be an outlet for direct balls as Parrott is more ball to feet link up player. Can see Jayson Molumby coming in for the game as he's supposedly in Dublin.

I'd go with more or less the same but make a couple of changes like give one of the other keepers a game or both a half each. Stevens for McClean would be the only change I'd make in defence to give him minutes. Molumby in for Hendrick if he's brought in, start McGrath and bring in either Parrott or Keane as the link up man. Qatar won't be treating this as a friendly and neither should we. Going into next month with two wins will do the squad the world of good and we'll have two friendlies next March to give plenty of fringe players playing time before the nations league.

Qatar isn't the free hit that other friendlies have been before. This isn't an Oman or New Zealand type friendly and will be looked at when Kenny's contract is up for renewal. When you've a team that's still getting to grips with a style and formation that's containing lads with a low number of caps momentum is everything. We should definitely be treating this as a qualifier because they'll be looking at it as a game to help build momentum for the world cup. Especially losing all their games so far against the top two seeds in the group.

Different players can be tried out in certain positions but the core of the team such as the back three, Doherty, Cullen, and Robinson should all be starting again from last night. Throw in Kelleher for Bazunu, Stevens for McClean, anybody for Hendrick, McGrath for Horgan, and possibly Parrott for Idah to give another link up player a run.

Not sure I agree. We had a good result against Azerbaijan and this is the last game of the window. I'd like to see us stick with a similar team to try and create some momentum. I'd be happy enough with the same team, maybe just have Kelleher in for Bazunu simply because he needs to have more than 45 senior international minutes under his belt and bring Knight in for Horgan.

Would like to see Parrott or Ogbene start. Idah looked shattered last night.

Should be plenty of opportunities next year for fringe players to see minutes. Two friendlies in March, and with the WC on in November there could be a good chance to get a training camp together to see out the year.

March definitely needs to see fringe players looked at because June is a big window with four games in 12 days. We've already seen the fitness issues which comes with three games in one window, and this one comes at the end of the season.

Poland beat Andorra 1-0 today.

After seeing the 2nd half of the France vs Spain game wouldn't it be amazing to get to that level.

Even with our great future prospects we won't get to those heights sadly imo.

Rocco Vata with a thunderbastard.